Ballymore Ltd had £122m loss last year

BALLYMORE LTD, a UK holding company controlled by developer Seán Mulryan, incurred a loss of £122 million last year. This compares to a profit of just over £1 million for the previous trading year.

Ballymore Ltd is an investment holding company controlled by Mr Mulryan in the UK. Its sole assets are investments in subsidiary companies which are all involved in property-related activity.

The accounts for the year ended March 31st, 2010, show that the company took a write down of almost £90 million on these assets, with the value almost halving to £94.6 million compared to £184.4 million at the end of March 2009.

This £90 million impairment charge, together with a £33 million write-off of monies due from group companies, reflecting falls in the underlying asset value according to the accounts, resulted in the £122.8 million loss.

The accounts also show that the company had debts of more than a quarter of a billion at year-end, which were due for repayment within one year. However, a note to the accounts says that group companies to which the £253.6 million is owed have indicated that they will not seek repayments of amounts owed to them for at least 12 months from the date of approval of the financial statements.

Ballymore Ltd is a subsidiary of UK company Ballymore Property Holdings Ltd, whose ultimate parent company is Ballymore Properties in Ireland. Accounts recently filed for Ballymore Properties show that the carrying value of its development property and fixed-asset portfolio was written down by more than half a billion last year to €1.8 billion.

Ballymore is one of the largest property companies in the country. It is understood to have recently reached agreement with Nama on a business plan. Despite the losses by its UK businesses, the company is embarking on some commercial property developments in the UK and Europe.

One of Ballymore’s UK businesses recently completed a debt-for-equity swaps with bondholders.